Korean Agency Commences Capacity Devt Programme for Civil Servants.

Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu

The Korea International Cooperation Agency, known as KOICA, has commenced its e-governance capacity development programmes for 125 staff of federal government Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with a view to equipping them on the adoption and implementation of the e-governance framework to be introduced soon by government.

The four weeks series of lectures and training programmes would be rounded off on February 19 with the Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu and other government dignitaries expected to be in attendance. The embassy of the Republic of South Korea in a statement made available to THISDAY in Abuja acknowledged that e-governance is the engine that powers national development through improving the efficiency and transparency of public administration. It added that it was in this context that the present administration is focusing on platform for implementation of its programmes and policies.

The statement read: "It is worth noting that this training is the 2nd in-country training after the 1st pilot local training which is expected to kick off a series of in-country training being implemented by the KOICA Nigeria Office as part of the training component of the e-government project. The pilot training which was held during trained 112 Nigerian civil servants from across 47 MDA's."

The commencement of the training provided background information about the KOICA Nigerian e-government project to the participants as well as the importance of e-government to the country.

The Ambassador of Korea, Mr. Noh Kyu-duk, the Country Director KOICA, Mr. Jung Sang-hoon, the acting Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr. Vincent Olatunji, the Administrator of the Public Service Institute of Nigeria, Dr. Misau Shehu Abubkar as well as experts from Korea were in attendance at the commencement of the training.

Topics to be treated as the training include how to make e-government master plan a national agenda including harmonisation with national ICT master plan, Public Private Partnership (PPP) and Collaboration among stakeholders.
The statement added: "The second in-country training programme which will last for a period of 4 weeks aims to train about 125 Nigerian Civil Servants, conducted by six Korean professors and Nigerian Local teachers on the following courses.

"The training programme is one of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) Programs of Korea, which is being implemented by the Korea International Cooperation Agency. It is hoped that the e-government project will play a key role as a platform to strengthen the country’s e-government capacity expected to yielded greater dividend of democracy."

 -THISDAY